Mustang Evolution

History & Information

MustangEvolution.com was created by me in May of 2003, originally named 232stangs.com. I was 17 years old at the time, nearing the end of my Junior High School year. For my 16th birthday I received a 1995 V6 Mustang and that, combined with my love for computers, put me on the path that would create Mustang Evolution.

Wanting to modify my Mustang to make it look and perform the way I wanted it to, I joined my first online Ford Mustang forum soon after my 16th birthday. Curios to how the forums worked, I decided to try find a way to make my own forum and learn the technologies behind them.

I bought the domain 232stangs.com, put up a landing page and then created the forum using the free phpBB forum software. From there I was hooked. Now I didn't want to just customize my Mustang, I wanted to customize my Mustang Forum.

The Move To Mustang Evolution

After a few domain changes, I decided I wanted to do more than just be a forum for V6 Mustang owners. The niche was too small and I didn't want to lock myself into it, especially if one day they stopped making V6 Mustangs. While sitting in my room trying to think about what domain I wanted to buy for a forum that included all Mustangs, I looked over at my wall and saw a poster I had gotten for Christmas that showed the Evolution of the Mustang with the words Mustang Evolution.

Once I had the domain, it was all about how I am going to grow the forum. Free software was no longer going to cut it, so I migrated the forum to vBulletin. Shared hosting wasn't reliable, so I bought my first dedicated server and learned how to setup a LAMP server. Now that the site was on reliable hosting, had reliable software, the rest of it was hitting the ground marketing the new website.

Growth

Growing Mustang Evolution was now my mission. I didn't just want to be a small website, I wanted to be THE website for Ford Mustang owners.

Meet & Greets

One of the effective ways of growing Mustang Evolution was driving my Mustang to events or even hosting the events. Throughout my ownership of Mustang Evolution I attended Mustang car shows and events all over the country, marketing my website during the process. That process built brand loyalty and in the process I made life long friends.

Search Engines

While Meet & Greets worked, people still weren't finding my website searching on Google. I knew that I had to improve my SEO if I didn't want to be left behind so I started following all the SEO blogs I could find, reading every article I could get my hands on to learn the best practices.

I also became active within the vBulletin community, looking for ways to improve the software I was using. vBulletin was great at the time but slow to adopt new technologies, so I found myself learning the vBulletin code and modifying it myself to get the results I needed to improve the sites performance in terms of both speed and SEO.

Making Money

While in college Google Adsense was starting to blow up and I started to see how many people were now making money off their visitors by just adding a few lines of JavaScript to their website. Up until this point, I had been grinding it out by selling advertising spots on the website directly to companies that sold parts or services for the Ford Mustang. While this was nice, the money was not enough for my to do this full time. However, the day I rolled Adsense out on the website, I realized just how much money I had been leaving on the table. Now the reality of owning my own business and working for myself was within reach.

Going Full Time

At the beginning of my third year of college I made a decision to leave school and work on the website full time. I was making enough money to support myself but felt like the time I was spending in college was leaving money on the table with Mustang Evoltuion.

From that point on there was no looking back. I traveled across the country working on building the Mustang Evolution brand, I attended conferences related to building websites and online communities, and even went to Washington D.C. to lobby for the online advertising industry with the help of IAB, the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Giving Up Half

Through my networking I discovered more people like me. People who were building online web properties and specifically online communities. One of those connections was Andy Robinowitz the owner of Social Knowledge, LLC. After some discussions, I sold 50 percent of Mustang Evolution to Andy and went to work with him at Social Knowledge helping with his communities as well as continuing to work on Mustang Evolution.

This lasted until April 2012, where I made the tough decision to sell the remaining 50 percent. While it was hard to say goodbye to something I built and cared about, I was excited about my new venture with another business friend doing the same thing, building online communities.

That lead me to becoming a part of Group Net, LLC, running some of the largest online communities on the internet, specifically ChristianForums.com.